Secrets of the Mona Lisa
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
- Explore the captivating history, mysteries, and fame of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Uncover the stories behind its enigmatic smile, infamous theft, and the ongoing debates surrounding this iconic masterpiece.
Author: Arnaldo Teodorani
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila
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I went to the Louvre and as someone with a degree in fine art I was so excited to see some of the most famous pieces of art, what I wasn’t that bothered about was seeing the Mona Lisa but as they say: ‘when in Rome’. Luckily we must’ve hit it at a quiet time and being small I was able to weave my way to the front fairly quickly and I have to say I was surprisingly enraptured by the Mona Lisa. I’m not sure if it was because I had such low expectations, knowing that she was so small and expecting to be waiting for ages to see her up close or because I appreciated the techniques and the historical significance of the painting (or more likely both) but I found myself unable to look away from her and it was all I could talk about for the rest of the day, it felt like seeing a celebrity
Fine arts degree...lol
@@terrystroble8657 not sure what you mean by that?
@@terrystroble8657stupid comment...lol
@@rebeccaphin People don't know what a Fine Arts Degree entails so they laugh it off as someone insignificant because they're ignorant.
When i hear about another Mona Lisa being found, I can’t help thinking of that Doctor Who serial back in the 70s where an alien stuck on earth forces DaVinci to paint multiple Monas to be able to sell them later
Think it was City of Death
Yep. City of Death part 3. Season 17 episode 7. 4th Doctor. And, yes, I'm a big Whovian nerd 😂.
"But enough about me" bahaha I laughed harder than I should have 😂
i dont think it was a painting OF his apprentice, but its certainly plausible he had him sit as a posed portrait model to get the shadows and folds of the garment and so on...
Man I was about to say, the old "lady" who was trying to vandalize it was nuts, only to find out it was a 30 something man lol.
genuinely thank you, as having heard why artists respect and enjoy this painting is really interesting. the lack of defined lines is striking especially when taken from a pioneer within the genre. while i still wouldnt want to pay to travel to see the painting in person i can now really understand why artists would wish to do so.
Everyone I've ever talked to who has seen the Mona Lisa says it's smaller than they expected, but I remember when visited the Louvre in 2015, it was actually bigger than I expected. I also have never experienced the "eyes following the viewer everywhere in the room" illusion, so I have maintained not much more regard for the painting than any of its contemporaries. This video has changed that -- I didn't know it was painted on slabs of wood! Also, the engineering that goes into keeping a 500 year old painting soup-proof but also minimizing the impersonal nature of a glass case is amazing!
For future reference: 7:19 Brunelleschi pronounced "broon-el-es-kee", 19:29 Guillaume pronounced "gee-yome", 24:54 Uffizi pronounced "oo-feet-see"
Not in the UK!! 😂
Ooh! Speaking of the Louvré, did you hear they accepted a basketball hoop as a piece of art? I hear it's considered a... Rim-brandt! :)
Went through the Louvre in 2002. Must say, paintings in general do little for me, (although a good Albert Namatjira landscape I certainly admire) and the Mona Lisa is good only because of the person who did it.
In 2000, during the Sydney Olympics, Bill Gates donated a codex (note pad) of Leonardo’s. The pages were kept pressed between two panes of glass, in a cabinet with inert gas and under special lighting so as to not damage the paper.
THAT was outstanding!
To look at his hand drawn sketches and his own handwriting was just amazing. Sure, the helicopter he drew may have needed adjustments to actually fly, but to consider this was in the mind of someone 500 years before a helicopter was ever built….
And his anatomy drawings and the Vitruvian Man….unbelievable!
10:06 How in the world can you accurately assess the skin colour of someone with a painting of that person done centuries ago? Pigments get altered over time, vanish yellowed and the art of painting is not like photographie!
The hallway in front of the room the Mona Lisa is in has so many incredible pieces of art.
Heck, in the same room, across from the Mona Lisa, there's an amazing mural!
Its not worth the effort to see it.
Yeah I appreciated the other paintings more
@@mac24seven it may have been an amazing portrait in the past but it’s been over cleaned and badly restored so many times that it’s now just a shadow of its former self.
A one-of-a-kind painting that no AI can replicate.
The story behind "The Battle of Anghiari" is also very interesting.
Love this video! 4:45, 9:35, 14:55, and 16:35--the actor portraying Leonardo is drawing and painting with his right hand but much evidence exists to conclude that Leonardo was left-handed
Is there anything more Kafkaesque than crowds of people queuing to see a picture that isn’t there?
Kafkaesque?
@@overlorddante From Merriam Webster:
Of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz Kafka or his writings
Having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality
Crowds of people queuing to view a painting that wasn’t there is bizarrely illogical. The fact the Franz Kafka was amongst their number was a bonus.
@@overlorddanteKafka was a famous writer in Austria (I think, near there anyway) who wrote a few bizarre stories, think of the movie where the bad guy sews people together into a centipede…. That kind. In one story, the main character woke up this morning in the body of a cockroach the same size as his own….
we all know that there were multiple copies of the mona lisa... Tom Baker's Dr Who said so!
You just have to X-ray them and look for the words "THIS IS A FAKE!" written on the gesso in felt-tip.
("City of Death," with guest star Julian Glover, and special appearance by John Cleese.)
@@willmfrankCleese wasn't in it, I'm pretty darn sure, I'm also a big Python fan, and would have noticed. Or if I'm wrong, let me know which character he played, I'll go back and rewatch.
@@rachelwitherspoon4394 He (and Eleanor Bron, if I'm not mistaken) stroll into the gallery where the TARDIS is parked and begin a discussion on the artistic merit of the installation of an antique English police box in a Paris museum. The Doctor and Romana run in, step into the box, and it disappears. Cleese reacts with his classic "Hmph." It's a very short scene near the end of the final episode.
@@willmfrank Thank you, I'd COMPLETELY forgotten that scene! Apparently it's been WAY too long since I've watched,lol. Going to do a Tom Baker binge watch now!
I liked the part where Simon said "grilled Salmon".
500 years ago beauty standards were different. High foreheads were in, and women sometimes shaved their hairlines toacheive it. Her eyebrows may have been shaved as well. Of course, she may have had medical problems too. People back then didn't live very long in general, few ever reached the age of 50. Interesting video!
Yeah, I hope they included an explicit caveat about only assessing "if this exact photo was how a modern patient looked, i.e. we are disregarding beauty practices, fading and yellowing of pigment and varnish, accumulation of dirt, etc". The ongoing debates and results of museums cleaning and repairing paintings is quite fascinating and controversial. But I think I do prefer removing the common heavy yellowing many pieces suffered from over the ages.
But as to age, misconception? Once people made it to age 5 they had a shot at living well into and beyond their 50's (assuming no massive war or plagues, which of course were not constantly everywhere all at once). Life expectancy is dragged down by high infant mortality. If a couple had 3 kids, one lived to 73, and one to age 59, but one died at age 1, the life expectancy for the kids was only _44._
I do wish we utilized medians more instead of only averages. It's not uncommon to cite an average when what we actually want is a median!
Also consider the fact that the varnish has yellowed which hides the original color tones of the painting. Personally I think the Mayo Clinic article is bull.
"It is a very pretty painting."
- The Fourth Doctor, *City of Death*
I READ WHERE IT IS A PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF
Looks like Perugia was properly interrogated in his left eye.
The Freud bit 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
That intro though🤣
Yes
It's a lot smaller than many people realise
Yet it's so well known and treated like an ancient gem stone! 😅
6:20 thats a long way to explain vectors
I can’t believe Picasso was accused of stealing the Mona Lisa 😂 that right there was worth this entire video
Sweet!
FYI: The reference photo @ 1:16 is wrong. This particular photo is published in a lot of books etc (I don't know why), but it has a bad yellow cast to it, which makes the painting look more "aged" (i.e. with yellow varnish) than it is in real life. It's something that annoys me. I wish people would stop using that bad copy. If you check modern photos (with a correct colour temperature), you will see what I mean.
It's more than just a little compelling that you can overlay Da Vinci's face onto Mona Lisa's and the facial features match perfectly. Whoever it was supposed to be a portrait of, I believe he just used a mirror and some imagination.
The thing that blew me away was discovering it was painted on wood, not canvas. SINCE WHEN???
The Mona Lisa might not be worth the visit, but the museum has tons of other stuff lying around.
When we went there was a long queue outside that basically went all the way through to the painting. We had bought the city card and just walked past the line queueing to buy tickets. It was surreal.
We got a glimpse and a photo of people raising their tablets and phones to capture a bad photo and then went for the history section that was way to empty for what it offers.
People literally wait hours just to be in that room for 5 minutes and then leave for the next tourist trap.
"Lord what fools these mortals be" 😅
best opening ever 😂😂
Youre supposed to put the Mona Lisa in the mirror and see the reflection of something .. like an optional illusion and it has a deep meaning. I forget what it was
Optional? Or optical? 😂
@@Heartwing37 Technically both since no one can force you to hold up a mirror, I suppose. LMAO
@9:38 the illustration of da Vinci he is using his right hand, da Vinci was left handed
Ambidextrous in fact, but it was sinful at the time to write with your left.
Thank you for another excellent video essay! As always, I learned a lot here. But, I must admit that I was hoping that you'd explore the controversial theory that the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait by Leonardo, depicting himself as a young woman. I'm not saying that I believe that theory, but it is very interesting, and worth exploring. But I loved this video.
Regarding the end, just because a painting is the best in any given group, not knowing what else was at the exhibition, but knowing it was avant garde modern art, maybe the chimp’s painting was the best…..
Viscari looks like he has crazy-long arms 8:44. Is it just me?
The photo of the painting definitely has unnaturally long arms! If you draw the underlying anatomy of classic paintings, sometimes gorgeous paintings with convincing anatomy would actually be wonky if it were real life. Clothes and accessories are just the start of ways for a picture to trick us into believing impossible anatomy. But I don't even know what's going on with that painting!
I wish they would _clean_ the Mona Lisa! I am sure that they would reveal some vibrant colors, and get rid of the smoky smudge all over the picture. The improvement would be amazing!
They can’t because of how DaVinci painted her. He used a new technique that makes the painting very fragile and the glaze and varnish are so similar in chemical composition that it wouldn’t be possible to remove one without the other (this happened when they tried to clean her in the 1800s). One of DaVinci’s students made a copy that has been restored so if you want to get a good idea of what she would have looked like originally, I’d look at the copy.
It’s a troubling thought that destroying a unique work of art would ever result in support of the vandals.
I didn’t even know about the whole theft thing!
What I do know, is if you cover Mona Lisa’s eyes, the smile changes.
It’s the eyes which make the smile vague.
Leonardo was amazing, not only was he a a great artist, he also lead the turtles to defeat The Shredder and he starred in Titanic, what a guy...
He invented the helicopter.
@@duncancurtis5108 what a guy
Ehem, let's not forget his first film "Critters 3" truly a forgotten masterpiece.
Been to Paris three time yet it never occured to stand in line and pay top dollar for seeing the Mona Lisa. Nonetheless a nice painting! I had an icecream and later on a very nice lunch at jardin de Luxembourg for about 25% the money and actually seen a bit of Paris by foot 😅
could it be that whoever is in that painting isn't really human but something from another world that looks like human?
I’ve always known it as “la Joconde”. I also thought it was common knowledge that he had painted too. I was taught that in school in the late 80s early 90s.
Hi guys live the show
No mention of the Prado Mona Lisa? I thought for sure you would have talked about it here, it is believed to have been worked on in the same workshop and painted alongside the original.
"If that's art I'm a Hottentot."
- Harry S Truman, U. S. Art-Critic-in-Chief.
Are you telling me that direct deposit has existed for 500 years?
🇺🇸
Has anyone ever noticed its just George Washington with a wig?
0:13 😂😂😂
Humans in the Renaissance era always depected with weird looking faces lol 😂
6 monas found that’s so good they couldn’t decide which one is real after 1911 theft, 2 right now and they’re painted by da Vinci and his student they believe, none of them was the one I looked at 30y ago 😂😂😂 man I feel scammed.. a damn replica as it turns out, I fought with em Japanese for nothing 🤣
eTHEreal
Lol@Simon: "caRRRstle"
I have discovered the true reason for the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile. No, really. Such paintings take several days to finish. On the day Leonardo was working on "Mona's" smile, they took a break, during which Leonardo used the bathroom. When they returned to painting and Mona resumed her pose, she looked at Leonardo, and happened to notice that the great master's fly was open.
Any theory that states that the Mona Lisa was painted from memory (or from fantasy) was debunked the moment studies were conducted on both known real copies of the picture (because there are two that have been validated, the famous Mona Lisa of the Louvre and the less known Mona Lisa of El Prado) that show they were painted in the same room from different angles (also meaning that the second one was, in fact, painted by a pupil). Given that the second one was found with the background painted over black, similar to Leonardo's consigned portraits but in contrast with his religious portraits, it's my pet hypothesis that Leonardo regarded the picture (or the model) as sacred, so sacred he kept the picture and delivered the copy made by his pupil after converting it to his style for consigned portraits (i.e. a portrait over a black background).
Side note: some of the other mysteries of the painting are explained by aging (the lacquer used by Leonardo yellows hard unless kept in the appropriate conditions, of which for some reason one paradoxically seems to be relatively high humidity) and a botched 19th century restoration that removed some of the layers, including the eyebrows, wrinkles and eyelashes.
Side note 2: the picture IS damaged, as it was stolen a second time and this new burglar had less qualms about the integrity, so instead of taking down the frame he directly cut the picture out of the frame with a knife, so the current Mona Lisa is a tad bit smaller than when it was painted.
#1
Nope, I'm not first!
I always thought her smile looks like the kind one would make if you were suddenly told not to smile.
Only an opinion.
0:13 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Leo wanted to take off with her in his wooden chopper😅😅
They say the Brits stole all those monuments yet France has Italy's most famous painting!
mum!! he's saying davinsy again!
It's a good job da Vinci was renovating his bathroom and a brickie was on hand to shout out "Give us a smile darlin'!". 'Moaning' Lisa was a right moody bint.
In Erope, "Lisa" is pronounced "leeza"
My question is: Where do the aliens figure in all of this?
Da Vinci was an alien. You didn't know?
Smile? Grimace? Hmm,I think cystitis.
Starfishes love... ya
when you pay to look at it, how do we know its the actual real one and not a copy they put there to protect the real one from damage or theft
I would not doubt this at all. In fact, I would recommend it!
Hilarious how people take photos with their smart-phones. Better renditions available at the gift shop or free on the web. None of them taking the photos are *LOOKING* at this work of art - it is similar to people who go to a concert, not to actually see any of it or enjoy the music, but purely to stick their phones in the air. I'm old, please forgive me for my honesty.
I always thought the closed mouth was due to bad or missing teeth.
The Louvre is amazing, and so is the Mona Lisa, but its not the best piece of art in the world, its not even the best in that museum.
Happiness is in the eyes.. not mouth
anyone else think the foto of the mona lisa in the excelsior paper didnt look like the mona lisa? 31:10
My Dad went to see it, it's the Mona Lisa! I'm going to see the Mona Lisa! THAT'S IT?!!? that's what all the fuss was about? I think he had more fun describing how disappointed he was and complaining about how underwhelmed he was than actually seeing it.
Same lol
Was the Mona Lisa a self portrate? Some think that is why "she" is smiling!
My sister waited over an hour to see the Mona Lisa, she was completely underwhelmed.
What the hell is this thumbnail!?
It's always looked like George Washington in drag, if you ask me...
Great video! Ageism sucks. I have good friends I respect from all of the current generations. Maybe the “primitives” aren’t so wrong.
I never got the hype about Mona Lisa
I’ve seen it twice. Still an ugly dark little thing. Not my favourite.
First ❤️
Not 1st but the best
I don't see what the big deal is. I find many other old works far more interesting. Its like a self-feeding myth. Sure was a lot smaller in person that I thought it would be.
Yes, I agree with you
That’s the thing about art, a lot of its prestige comes down to backstory
I've always been just as impressed by Vermeer's works
It only became well-known after being stolen. It's a celebrity painting. Other paintings might be better, or even more interesting, but this one has that sensation tied to it.
@@catherine_404 And we've perpetuated it by watching this video.
It's nice enough, but nothing special 🤷♀️
It's just another picture on the wall.
It gets touched/ restored up every few years making it no longer original and just a painting on top of a painting on top of a painting etc. Back when I was in school it was debatable whether or not she was smiling and nowadays she's obviously smiling.
Ssssssssssort your high end out please.
First?
Fourth*
Nope, I'm first!
I guess I'm not very sophisticated. I don't get the fascination with the Mona Lisa. She's not especially pretty, in my opinion she's not mysterious and it's just an, albeit well done, portrait of a woman. There are lots of well done portraits of women. What's the big deal?
I would literally rather see anything by Van Gogh. Especially Starry Night.
if it even a picture of a women saw something about on nat geo
Outside of anything modern art this is the most overrated painting. Well maybe the Jesus one that just sold for 100 mill
lets face it, this brawd aint much to look at
Fucking cringe
Meh big deal. Give me dogs playing poker and Elvis on black velvet any day. I may not know art but I know what I like.
😂